Pre-Conference Workshops

This workshop will review the basic structure and guiding principles of our program, developed by and for nurses to address the moral distress, burnout, and accumulated stressors exacerbated by the COVID-10 pandemic. Our certified Nurse Professional Development Specialists for Wellness will teach participants to use one element of our program, Community Resiliency Model (CRM)® and allow them to practice the skills associated with this brain-based method.

Learner Objectives:

1. State the rationale for the structure and guiding principles of the WE CARE Program.
2. Apply the basic skills of the Community Resiliency Model (CRM)®   through didactic and experiential learning techniques.
3. List resources for Psychological First Aid Training and Peer Response & Support Programs, e.g., RISE.
4. Discuss sustainability of wellness programs.

Presenters:

• Patricia A. Patrician, PhD, RN, FAAN
• Toni Beam, MSN, RN
• Joseph Travis, MSN, RN
• Dana Morson, MSN, RN
  University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Nursing

Patricia A. Patrician, PhD, RN, FAAN, Professor and Rachel Z. Booth Endowed Chair in Nursing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Nursing in Birmingham, Alabama, joined the UAB faculty in 2008 after a 26-year career in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps, retiring as Colonel. In the military, she held positions as staff nurse, nurse manager, clinical nurse specialist, LPN instructor, and CE Administrator. After earning her PhD, she was Nursing Research Director at Walter Reed Army Medical Center followed by Chief, Department of Nursing Science at the Academy of Health Sciences. At UAB she teaches/mentors students in the PhD and Executive DNP Programs. She conducts research on nursing’s contributions to patient safety and quality care outcomes. The recipient of over $12M in federal grants, she is currently working on projects evaluating the impact of the pandemic on the nursing workforce and on patient care, as well as interventions to assist in the post-pandemic psychological recovery of nurses. Dr. Patrician Co-Directs of the VA Quality Scholars program at the Birmingham VA site and mentors post-doctoral nurses, physicians, and pharmacists in quality improvement and improvement science activities. She has co-authored over 110 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters. Dr. Patrician earned a BSN from Wilkes University, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; MSN (Critical Care) from the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio; and PhD in nursing from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing.

Toni Beam, MSN, RN, NE-BC, Nurse Wellness Manager for the WE CARE team, joined the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Nursing after 12 years of frontline nursing care. Throughout her career, she has held a number of positions including staff nurse, Assistant Nurse Manager, and Nurse Manager. Caring for those that provide patient care has become her passion through work in leadership and now the WE CARE grant. It is vitally important to Toni that healthcare workers, especially nursing teams, are well in mind, body, and spirit. Toni Beam earned her BSN from the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama; MSN from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).

Joseph Travis, MSN, RN-BC, began his nursing career working at UAB where he became board-certified in medical-surgical nursing and has also practiced as a family nurse practitioner in rural Alabama.  He is the recipient of the 2018 Clinical Nurse Excellence Award, awarded by UAB Medicine.  He currently works on a HRSA grant dealing with nursing burnout for the UAB School of Nursing.

Dana Morson, MSN, RN, started at UAB as a staff nurse on the neurosurgical step-down unit in 2014. During her time there, she obtained a master’s in nursing in 2017 with a family nurse practitioner specialty. She then transitioned to practice as a nurse practitioner in the vascular neurology clinic of The Kirklin Clinic of UAB from 2017-2022. She briefly practiced as a nurse practitioner at CoreLife Healthcare in Alabama in 2022. She is presently an NPDS in the WECARE program with UAB School of nursing.